Autorretrato

Around 1629 two young painters were working in the same small city of Leiden, close enough that people struggled to tell their early work apart, Jan Lievens and Rembrandt van Rijn, both barely past 20. Lievens painted this self-portrait then, his hair falling in loose, quickly brushed strands, his eyes turned aside as if caught mid-thought. There is a strange piece of evidence for how tangled the two lives were. When conservators examined the oak panel, tree-ring dating showed the wood came from the very same tree as a panel Rembrandt used for one of his own paintings, which means the two rivals were most likely buying their boards from the same supplier, side by side.